6.5 Isaiah's
vision

"And he saw a chariot [with] a couple of
horsemen, a chariot of asses, [and] a chariot of
camels ..."

Isaiah 21:7

Who was the rider upon the ass? Every Sunday school
student will tell us that this was a prophecy of Jesus
(pbuh), as stated in John:

"And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat
thereon; as it is written,"

John 12:14

but who is the promised prophet who would ride the camel?
If it is not Muhammad (pbuh) then this prophecy has yet to
be fulfilled. Let us read on...

"And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men,
[with] a couple of horsemen. And he answered and
said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven
images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground."

Isaiah 21:9

Babylon did indeed fall before Islam and the Islamic
nation under the guidance of Muhammad (pbuh) did indeed
succeed in eradicating the worship of idols from Babylon
replacing it with the worship of God alone. In fact, the
Muslims were the only believers in the God of Isaiah to ever
succeed in fulfilling this prophesy (see chapter 10).
Continuing ...

"The burden upon Arabia ..."

Isaiah 21:13

What does the word "burden" mean? Let us ask the Scofield
Study Bible:

" which also means an oracle is a word sometimes
used in the prophetical writings to indicate a divine
message of judgment"

Scofield Study Bible New King James Version, note 1, p.
792

So the Muslims of Arabia (and subsequently Muslims
everywhere) would be assigned the burden of God's
message.

"The inhabitants of the land of Tema brought water to
him that was thirsty, they prevented with their bread him
that fled. For they fled from the swords, from the drawn
sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of
war"

Isaiah 21:14-15

Tema, according to John McKenzie's dictionary of
the Bible is

"a place name and tribal name of Arabia; a son of
Ishmael... The name survives in Teima, an oasis of the part
of the Arabian desert called the Nefud in N Central
Arabia."

This word, Tema, is the name of the ninth son of Ishmael
(the father of the Arabs), in Genesis 25:13-15 we read:

"And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by
their names, according to their generations: the firstborn
of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, And
Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur,
Naphish, and Kedemah"

Strong's concordance tells us that this name was also
applied to the land settled by Tema the son of Ishmael. It
goes on to explain how this word is "probably of foreign
derivation". Indeed, this word, Teima,
is an Arabic word which means "Barren desert". It remains
the name of a city in the Arabian peninsula just north of
"Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah," or "Madinah" for short (Please
see Map 1, page 440). Muhammad (pbuh) and his companions
were given sanction to migrate. They departed Makkah during
the night and left all of their possessions behind. Upon
reaching Madinah they were greeted by it's citizens with
open arms and Muhammad (pbuh) assigned each one of the
Muhajireen (citizens of Makkah) to one of the Ansar
(citizens of Madinah) to house and feed them until they
could strike out on their own. This became the first year of
the Arab "Hijra" (Emigration) calendar used in Islamic
countries to this day.

"For thus hath the LORD said unto me, Within a year,
according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of
Kedar shall fail. And the residue of the number of archers,
the mighty men of the children of Kedar, shall be
diminished: for the LORD God of Israel hath spoken
[it]."

Isaiah 21:16-17

Kedar* is the second son of Ishmael, the
father of the Arabs:

"And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by
their names, according to their generations: the firstborn
of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam."

Genesis 25:13

Kedar is also synonymous with all of Arabia in general,
as in Ezekiel:

"Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar."

Ezekiel 27:21

The Arabs of Makkah, the capital of the paganistic tribes
of Arabia of the day, were indeed defeated by the Muslims in
the second year after their forced immigration from Makkah
to Madinah (The Hijra). This victory signaled the turning
point for Islam and a transition from a position of weakness
to one of power and victory (for more, please read chapter
10).

It should be pointed out here that, as mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter, the children of Israel, from the
tribe of Levi, were distinctly aware of this prophesy.
Indeed this is the very reason why they had begun to
immigrate from the lush and fertile pastures of their holy
land of Israel to the barren parched deserts of Arabia,
specifically to Madinah and the surrounding areas of
Khaibar, Tema, and others. Because they knew that
this is where the final prophet would appear. As mentioned
above, these children of the Jews were constantly
threatening the Arab inhabitants of Madinah (the tribes of
Al-Aws and Al-Kazraj) with his impending arrival and how
they would follow him and, through his leadership, they
would utterly destroy these Arabs. They had hoped that this
prophet would be from their tribe and that their presence in
this location might facilitate this hope.

When their awaited prophet finally did come, they
rejected him. They wanted a Jewish prophet from their own
tribe and not an Arab from the sons of Ishmael. Thus, they
allowed their pride to come between them and the truth which
they recognized. However, their efforts were not totally in
vain. So continuous were their efforts in threatening the
inhabitants of Madinah with the final prophet's imminent
arrival that when Muhammad (pbuh) finally did come, the
inhabitants of Madinah immediately recognized him and
hastened to follow him before the Jews. These inhabitants of
Madinah would later become among those very first followers
of Muhammad (pbuh) who would one year later go on to fulfill
the prophesy of Isaiah by defeating the "mighty men of
Kedar" in the very first battle of the Islamic nation, the
battle of Badr.

As the prophesy requires, one year after prophet Muhammad
(pbuh) and his followers escaped from the torture and
persecution of the people of Kedar and emigrated to Madinah,
the men of Makkah decided to once and for all put an end to
Muhammad (pbuh) and his followers. They assembled an army
consisting of 750 footmen and 200 horsemen, all of their
very best fighters, and all very well armed. The leaders of
this army consisted of the majority of the leaders of Kedar
(see chapter ten). They were confident of victory and
bragged that after this massacre they would be feared
throughout all of Arabia.

The Muslims heard of this amassing of troops and prepared
as best they could. They collected 313 footmen with two
horses and seventy camels. The Muslims fought long and hard
with the men of Kedar and were finally granted victory. This
battle ended in the death of these leaders of Kedar and a
resounding victory for the Muslims.

In this battle, only fourteen Muslims and seventy pagans
from Kedar were killed. Twenty four of those who died from
Kedar were their leaders. In addition, seventy others from
Kedar were taken as prisoners and later ransomed back to
their people (for more see chapter ten).

This was the great turning point for the Islamic nation.
This battle could be said to have been the beginning of the
end for the reign of idolatry and paganism within the land
of Arabia. This Muslim nation would then go on to expand to
many other nations until it spread from Spain to China,
fulfilling many more prophesies in the Bible, including
Daniel 2:44, Genesis 15:18-21, and many others.

An unfortunate misconception which has managed to creep
into many Western beliefs is that Islam was only spread
through force and the sword. Today, however, this notion is
beginning to be recognized for the absurdity that it was. A
Christian missionary, Sir Thomas W. Arnold says:

"...of any organized attempt to force the acceptance
of Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic
persecution intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we
hear nothing. Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course
of action, they might have swept away Christianity as easily
as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis
XIV made Protestantism penal in France, or the Jews were
kept out of England for 350 years. The Eastern Churches in
Asia were entirely cut off from communion with the rest of
Christendom throughout which no one would have been found to
lift a finger on their behalf, as heretical communions. So
that the very survival of these Churches to the present day
is a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of
Mohammedan [sic] governments towards them"

The Preaching of Islam, A History of the Propagation of
the Muslim Faith, Sir Thomas W. Arnold, Westminster
A. Constable & Co., London, 1896, p. 80.

"Against unbelievers he (Muhammad) enjoined his
followers to undertake a holy warefare, but only when
attacked. The earlier Moslem[sic] leaders did not
try to impose their faith upon other nations"

The History of Christianity in the Light of Modern
Knowledge, A Collective Work, Harcourt Brace and co., p.
520

Muslims did indeed wage many wars, just as many Jews and
Christians did both before and after this. Muslims waged
their wars in self-defense or in order to abolish idolatry,
tyranny, slavery, and oppression. Muslims were commanded to
not attack those who did not attack them, to not cut down a
fruit tree, to not kill the animals, to not take the
people's property, to not harm women or children or old
people so long as they did not fight with them, and to not
burn crops.

When they were victorious, the Muslims were commanded not
to destroy the churches nor the synagogues, nor to force the
people to convert to Islam. The people were allowed to
continue to practice their religion without persecution or
being forced to convert (Compare for example with Numbers
31, and Deuteronomy 20. Please also compare with the great
Spanish inquisitions).

"There is no compulsion in religion. The right path is
henceforth distinct from misguidance"

The noble Qur'an, Al-Bakarah(2):256.

If Islam was indeed spread by the sword and not by it's
spiritual appeal, then how do we explain, for example, the
fact that Islam is the religion of the majority of the
people of the country of Indonesia even though no Muslim
army ever set foot on their land and they can by no stretch
of the imagination be labeled as Arabs? The only contact
these people ever had with Islam was through Muslim traders
who passed through their lands.

If the truth were to be known, in almost every single
battle the Muslims ever participated in, they were almost
always vastly outnumbered. For example, when the Muslims
finally overthrew the pagan Byzantine superpower in the
battle of Al-Yarmook of the year 636 C.E., the Muslim army
consisted of 40,000 fighters verses 200,000 solders in the
Byzantine army. So although many historians may like to
attribute the fall of this superpower to any number of
factors such as claiming that they were taxed and weary from
previous battles with the Romans, (while not claiming that
the Muslims were taxed and weary from their previous
battles), and although they refuse to believe that this
victory could have come from the Almighty, still, one needs
to wonder if this victory were not through divine
intervention then how do we explain the fact that an
ill-equipped army of Bedouin sheep herders who were
outnumbered more than four to one could so resoundingly
defeat one of the two "superpowers" of their age?

"The extinction of race consciousness as between
Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam and
in the contemporary world. There is, as it happens, a crying
need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue."

The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, George Bernard Shaw, No.
81936.

"I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high
estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only
religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating
capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make
itself appeal to every age. I have studied him-the wonderful
man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must
be called the Savior of Humanity. I believe that if a man
like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern
world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way
that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I
have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be
acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to
be acceptable to the Europe of today."